Russian missiles and drones struck Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities overnight and early Thursday, killing at least 13 people and wounding dozens more, Ukrainian officials said. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko urged residents to stay in shelters as ballistic missiles entered Ukraine’s airspace.
The attack came hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Russia was planning a massive strike based on intelligence indications, according to reports. Powerful explosions started rocking the city before 2 a.m. Thursday, setting off car alarms that soon mingled with sirens, according to reports. Rescuers were seen at an apartment building in Kyiv that was damaged in the overnight strikes.
Damage from the strikes was recorded at more than 30 locations in Kyiv, according to officials.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said it carried out a “massive strike using long-range precision air, land, and sea-based weapons and attack drones.” Moscow said the strikes targeted military-industrial facilities, fuel and energy complexes in Ukraine’s capital and the Kyiv region, as well as military airfields in the Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava, Cherkasy and Chernihiv regions.
Russia has routinely launched waves of missiles and drones at Ukrainian cities, including the capital, during its more than four-year invasion, officials said. Poland scrambled jets and Finland restricted airspace in response to the attacks, according to reports.
The assault is the latest in a series of large-scale Russian aerial barrages against Kyiv, continuing a pattern MSI previously documented: Russia killed 18 people in its third massive assault on the capital in three weeks on June 2, and flattened a Kyiv apartment building on May 15, killing nine people. June 2 attack coverage reported that ballistic and hypersonic weapons largely penetrated Ukrainian defenses, underscoring the country’s vulnerability in missile defense.
Russian ground forces have advanced only incrementally in the Donbas region, according to Ukrainian officials, while Ukrainian forces have largely halted Russian advances elsewhere along the front, officials said. Negotiations brokered by the Trump administration have remained stalled, with President Vladimir Putin continuing to demand that Ukraine cede territory in demands tantamount to Ukraine’s subjugation, according to The Wall Street Journal.